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. Spock also learns of this alliance when he is captured dealing with Romulans, but the Borg do not assimilate him as, for some reason, they believe Spock is already Borg.

I remember seeing something about this, V'Ger or something.

Yeah, apparently in the Star Trek EU, V'Ger founded the borg, or encountered some kind of proto-Borg to be rebuilt and come back to Earth. When Spock mind melded with V'ger he became kindof sortof borg or implanted his memory into the Borg and oh god, somebody stop me. Why won't you stop me? Just break my fingers so I can't type.

. Spock also learns of this alliance when he is captured dealing with Romulans, but the Borg do not assimilate him as, for some reason, they believe Spock is already Borg.

I remember seeing something about this, V'Ger or something.

Yeah, apparently in the Star Trek EU, V'Ger founded the borg, or encountered some kind of proto-Borg to be rebuilt and come back to Earth. When Spock mind melded with V'ger he became kindof sortof borg or implanted his memory into the Borg and oh god, somebody stop me. Why won't you stop me? Just break my fingers so I can't type.

V'ger didn't found the Borg. He had nothing to do with it actually.

Though if you take STO (The latest episodic "offering") as canon, then V'ger was subdued and assimilated long after the movie he showed up in. Either that, or it encountered the Borg at some point, which lead to the Borg deciding to copy the design with their own improvements (Read: Death Star sized Borg'ger probe that makes for some great trench runs in a Defiant.).

The Borg in the EU are actually

Spoiler:

The remnant of an ancient race that was created by a time paradox that humans and the Cailar started. Though the way this is introduced in the last half of the series has some people think it's pretty stupid. Myself included. Ironically, it's an Enterprise character that introduces this plot point, which is considered by most people to not be canon because of all the retcons to chronologically future series Berman and Braga did to avoid actually developing the series/putting effort into Enterprise before they were kicked off of the show.

The series this is in is actually pretty awesome, and i'd recommend reading the first few books, at least, even if you have no interest in the EU. It was the Destiny series, I believe, which was basically a lead-up to about half a decade worth of books. Where Janeway is revealed yet again as a complete and utter moron. After she blew up the transwarp node at the end of Voyager the Borg got really pissed off as a whole collective, as those things are apparently hard to create, even for them.

Their response was to decide that humanity was irrelevant, and go on an axe crazy rampage throughout the sector. This leads to them not sending one cube, but sending all of them, one for each world for the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, etc, etc.

The Federation ends up with some pretty horrific casualties at the end. Risa is just gone. Not even a planet there anymore. As are quite a few other core planets. And many of the outlying worlds were completely depopulated. The Borg just bombed them from orbit with plagues and other nastiness.

A lot of established characters, either in the show, or in the books, die in that series. And the ending's more bittersweet then anything else. It does lead into some good novels showing what happens when the Federation's put on the back foot, too. The entire Enterprise era subplot is lame, and serves as a ridiculous deux ex machina that ruins the latter half of the series, however.

There's some awesome moments in it, though. It establishes pretty much every major faction as being a badass in their own way when the chips are down. Like, early on in the series, a Galaxy class ship goes to aid a Klingon frontier colony that is sending out a SOS, it shows up, and gets its shit pushed in by a cube...

And then seeing that the Cube is going to wipe out the planet, not try to assimilate it, before they can make any repairs and re-engage the thing (However futilely.) to buy time for a Klingon fleet to show up, the captain doesn't hesitate to order the ship to go to warp facing the Cube, at point blank range even though he's scared shitless of dying. As the captain puts it "He only had to be brave, for just a moment".

This leads to some awesome Klingon politics, where Martok from DS9 pretty much throws a long overdue "reason you suck speech" to the council from DS9, and persuades them all to go to the Federation's aid. As Martok, in show, and in series, is pretty awesome, and isn't going to let something like that trump the Klingons.

There's also the big climax/twist reveal. The big ten powers of the show and EU finally manage to put their differences aside in the face of extinction long enough to all get together to stop the Borg armada. With more then a few main characters from the TV series in the allied armada.

Spoiler:

And are utterly crushed when the transwarp conduit opens. The Borg don't even stop to engage them. There's so many of them, and the cubes are obviously so big, that they just form one giant wall of black iron and smash through them with their hulls. The characters reactions are appropriately horrified in that "Oh fuck, we're all screwed" sort of way. And they are.

TVtropes puts it best:

Godzilla Threshold: The situation gets so bad that Starfleet seriously considers holding the Borg off with thalaron weapons and evacuating the Federation's population to another galaxy. In fact, Seven of Nine coldly deduces that the Federation cannot hope to win, and must embrace such desperate tactics to survive at all.

. Spock also learns of this alliance when he is captured dealing with Romulans, but the Borg do not assimilate him as, for some reason, they believe Spock is already Borg.

I remember seeing something about this, V'Ger or something.

Yeah, apparently in the Star Trek EU, V'Ger founded the borg, or encountered some kind of proto-Borg to be rebuilt and come back to Earth. When Spock mind melded with V'ger he became kindof sortof borg or implanted his memory into the Borg and oh god, somebody stop me. Why won't you stop me? Just break my fingers so I can't type.

V'ger didn't found the Borg. He had nothing to do with it actually.

Though if you take STO (The latest episodic "offering") as canon, then V'ger was subdued and assimilated long after the movie he showed up in. Either that, or it encountered the Borg at some point, which lead to the Borg deciding to copy the design with their own improvements (Read: Death Star sized Borg'ger probe that makes for some great trench runs in a Defiant.).

The Borg in the EU are actually

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

The remnant of an ancient race that was created by a time paradox that humans and the Cailar started.

The series this is in is actually pretty awesome, and i'd recommend reading the first few books, at least, even if you have no interest in the EU. It was the Destiny series, I believe, which was basically a lead-up to about half a decade worth of books. Where Janeway is revealed yet again as a complete and utter moron. After she blew up the transwarp node at the end of Voyager the Borg got really pissed off as a whole collective, as those things are apparently hard to create, even for them.

Their response was to decide that humanity was irrelevant, and go on an axe crazy rampage throughout the sector. This leads to them not sending one cube, but sending all of them, one for each world for the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, etc, etc.

The Federation ends up with some pretty horrific casualties at the end. Risa is just gone. Not even a planet there anymore. As are quite a few other core planets. And many of the outlying worlds were completely depopulated. The Borg just bombed them from orbit with plagues and other nastiness.

A lot of established characters, either in the show, or in the books, die in that series. And the ending's more bittersweet then anything else. It does lead into some good novels showing what happens when the Federation's put on the back foot, too. The entire Enterprise era subplot is lame, and serves as a ridiculous deux ex machina that ruins the latter half of the series, however.

There's some awesome moments in it, though. It establishes pretty much every major faction as being a badass in their own way when the chips are down. Like, early on in the series, a Galaxy class ship goes to aid a Klingon frontier colony that is sending out a SOS, it shows up, and gets its shit pushed in by a cube...

And then seeing that the Cube is going to wipe out the planet, not try to assimilate it, before they can make any repairs and re-engage the thing (However futilely.) to buy time for a Klingon fleet to show up, the captain doesn't hesitate to order the ship to go to warp facing the Cube, at point blank range even though he's scared shitless of dying. As the captain puts it "He only had to be brave, for just a moment".

This leads to some awesome Klingon politics, where Martok from DS9 pretty much throws a long overdue "reason you suck speech" to the council from DS9, and persuades them all to go to the Federation's aid. As Martok, in show, and in series, is pretty awesome, and isn't going to let something like that trump the Klingons.

There's also the big climax/twist reveal. The big ten powers of the show and EU finally manage to put their differences aside in the face of extinction long enough to all get together to stop the Borg armada. With more then a few main characters from the TV series in the allied armada.

Spoiler:

And are utterly crushed when the transwarp conduit opens. The Borg don't even stop to engage them. There's so many of them, and the cubes are obviously so big, that they just form one giant wall of black iron and smash through them with their hulls. The characters reactions are appropriately horrified in that "Oh fuck, we're all screwed" sort of way. And they are.

TVtropes puts it best:

Godzilla Threshold: The situation gets so bad that Starfleet seriously considers holding the Borg off with thalaron weapons and evacuating the Federation's population to another galaxy. In fact, Seven of Nine coldly deduces that the Federation cannot hope to win, and must embrace such desperate tactics to survive at all.

something ridiculous

How do they suss out the fact that FutureJaneway murdered the shit out of Borg Central with her future virus?

. Spock also learns of this alliance when he is captured dealing with Romulans, but the Borg do not assimilate him as, for some reason, they believe Spock is already Borg.

I remember seeing something about this, V'Ger or something.

Yeah, apparently in the Star Trek EU, V'Ger founded the borg, or encountered some kind of proto-Borg to be rebuilt and come back to Earth. When Spock mind melded with V'ger he became kindof sortof borg or implanted his memory into the Borg and oh god, somebody stop me. Why won't you stop me? Just break my fingers so I can't type.

V'ger didn't found the Borg. He had nothing to do with it actually.

Spoiler:

Though if you take STO (The latest episodic "offering") as canon, then V'ger was subdued and assimilated long after the movie he showed up in. Either that, or it encountered the Borg at some point, which lead to the Borg deciding to copy the design with their own improvements (Read: Death Star sized Borg'ger probe that makes for some great trench runs in a Defiant.).

The Borg in the EU are actually

Spoiler:

The remnant of an ancient race that was created by a time paradox that humans and the Cailar started.

The series this is in is actually pretty awesome, and i'd recommend reading the first few books, at least, even if you have no interest in the EU. It was the Destiny series, I believe, which was basically a lead-up to about half a decade worth of books. Where Janeway is revealed yet again as a complete and utter moron. After she blew up the transwarp node at the end of Voyager the Borg got really pissed off as a whole collective, as those things are apparently hard to create, even for them.

Their response was to decide that humanity was irrelevant, and go on an axe crazy rampage throughout the sector. This leads to them not sending one cube, but sending all of them, one for each world for the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, etc, etc.

The Federation ends up with some pretty horrific casualties at the end. Risa is just gone. Not even a planet there anymore. As are quite a few other core planets. And many of the outlying worlds were completely depopulated. The Borg just bombed them from orbit with plagues and other nastiness.

A lot of established characters, either in the show, or in the books, die in that series. And the ending's more bittersweet then anything else. It does lead into some good novels showing what happens when the Federation's put on the back foot, too. The entire Enterprise era subplot is lame, and serves as a ridiculous deux ex machina that ruins the latter half of the series, however.

There's some awesome moments in it, though. It establishes pretty much every major faction as being a badass in their own way when the chips are down. Like, early on in the series, a Galaxy class ship goes to aid a Klingon frontier colony that is sending out a SOS, it shows up, and gets its shit pushed in by a cube...

And then seeing that the Cube is going to wipe out the planet, not try to assimilate it, before they can make any repairs and re-engage the thing (However futilely.) to buy time for a Klingon fleet to show up, the captain doesn't hesitate to order the ship to go to warp facing the Cube, at point blank range even though he's scared shitless of dying. As the captain puts it "He only had to be brave, for just a moment".

This leads to some awesome Klingon politics, where Martok from DS9 pretty much throws a long overdue "reason you suck speech" to the council from DS9, and persuades them all to go to the Federation's aid. As Martok, in show, and in series, is pretty awesome, and isn't going to let something like that trump the Klingons.

There's also the big climax/twist reveal. The big ten powers of the show and EU finally manage to put their differences aside in the face of extinction long enough to all get together to stop the Borg armada. With more then a few main characters from the TV series in the allied armada.

Spoiler:

And are utterly crushed when the transwarp conduit opens. The Borg don't even stop to engage them. There's so many of them, and the cubes are obviously so big, that they just form one giant wall of black iron and smash through them with their hulls. The characters reactions are appropriately horrified in that "Oh fuck, we're all screwed" sort of way. And they are.

TVtropes puts it best:

Godzilla Threshold: The situation gets so bad that Starfleet seriously considers holding the Borg off with thalaron weapons and evacuating the Federation's population to another galaxy. In fact, Seven of Nine coldly deduces that the Federation cannot hope to win, and must embrace such desperate tactics to survive at all.

This is what happens when I stop reading Star Trek novels? Damnit, some of this stuff actually sounds entertaining. I think the last Trek series I read was about some kind of trans-dimensional cross-time bar for ship captain's where they hung out and told stories of their times as a badass.

. Spock also learns of this alliance when he is captured dealing with Romulans, but the Borg do not assimilate him as, for some reason, they believe Spock is already Borg.

I remember seeing something about this, V'Ger or something.

Yeah, apparently in the Star Trek EU, V'Ger founded the borg, or encountered some kind of proto-Borg to be rebuilt and come back to Earth. When Spock mind melded with V'ger he became kindof sortof borg or implanted his memory into the Borg and oh god, somebody stop me. Why won't you stop me? Just break my fingers so I can't type.

V'ger didn't found the Borg. He had nothing to do with it actually.

Spoiler:

Though if you take STO (The latest episodic "offering") as canon, then V'ger was subdued and assimilated long after the movie he showed up in. Either that, or it encountered the Borg at some point, which lead to the Borg deciding to copy the design with their own improvements (Read: Death Star sized Borg'ger probe that makes for some great trench runs in a Defiant.).

The Borg in the EU are actually

Spoiler:

The remnant of an ancient race that was created by a time paradox that humans and the Cailar started.

The series this is in is actually pretty awesome, and i'd recommend reading the first few books, at least, even if you have no interest in the EU. It was the Destiny series, I believe, which was basically a lead-up to about half a decade worth of books. Where Janeway is revealed yet again as a complete and utter moron. After she blew up the transwarp node at the end of Voyager the Borg got really pissed off as a whole collective, as those things are apparently hard to create, even for them.

Their response was to decide that humanity was irrelevant, and go on an axe crazy rampage throughout the sector. This leads to them not sending one cube, but sending all of them, one for each world for the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, etc, etc.

The Federation ends up with some pretty horrific casualties at the end. Risa is just gone. Not even a planet there anymore. As are quite a few other core planets. And many of the outlying worlds were completely depopulated. The Borg just bombed them from orbit with plagues and other nastiness.

A lot of established characters, either in the show, or in the books, die in that series. And the ending's more bittersweet then anything else. It does lead into some good novels showing what happens when the Federation's put on the back foot, too. The entire Enterprise era subplot is lame, and serves as a ridiculous deux ex machina that ruins the latter half of the series, however.

There's some awesome moments in it, though. It establishes pretty much every major faction as being a badass in their own way when the chips are down. Like, early on in the series, a Galaxy class ship goes to aid a Klingon frontier colony that is sending out a SOS, it shows up, and gets its shit pushed in by a cube...

And then seeing that the Cube is going to wipe out the planet, not try to assimilate it, before they can make any repairs and re-engage the thing (However futilely.) to buy time for a Klingon fleet to show up, the captain doesn't hesitate to order the ship to go to warp facing the Cube, at point blank range even though he's scared shitless of dying. As the captain puts it "He only had to be brave, for just a moment".

This leads to some awesome Klingon politics, where Martok from DS9 pretty much throws a long overdue "reason you suck speech" to the council from DS9, and persuades them all to go to the Federation's aid. As Martok, in show, and in series, is pretty awesome, and isn't going to let something like that trump the Klingons.

There's also the big climax/twist reveal. The big ten powers of the show and EU finally manage to put their differences aside in the face of extinction long enough to all get together to stop the Borg armada. With more then a few main characters from the TV series in the allied armada.

Spoiler:

And are utterly crushed when the transwarp conduit opens. The Borg don't even stop to engage them. There's so many of them, and the cubes are obviously so big, that they just form one giant wall of black iron and smash through them with their hulls. The characters reactions are appropriately horrified in that "Oh fuck, we're all screwed" sort of way. And they are.

TVtropes puts it best:

Godzilla Threshold: The situation gets so bad that Starfleet seriously considers holding the Borg off with thalaron weapons and evacuating the Federation's population to another galaxy. In fact, Seven of Nine coldly deduces that the Federation cannot hope to win, and must embrace such desperate tactics to survive at all.

This is what happens when I stop reading Star Trek novels? Damnit, some of this stuff actually sounds entertaining. I think the last Trek series I read was about some kind of trans-dimensional cross-time bar for ship captain's where they hung out and told stories of their times as a badass.

. Spock also learns of this alliance when he is captured dealing with Romulans, but the Borg do not assimilate him as, for some reason, they believe Spock is already Borg.

I remember seeing something about this, V'Ger or something.

Yeah, apparently in the Star Trek EU, V'Ger founded the borg, or encountered some kind of proto-Borg to be rebuilt and come back to Earth. When Spock mind melded with V'ger he became kindof sortof borg or implanted his memory into the Borg and oh god, somebody stop me. Why won't you stop me? Just break my fingers so I can't type.

V'ger didn't found the Borg. He had nothing to do with it actually.

Though if you take STO (The latest episodic "offering") as canon, then V'ger was subdued and assimilated long after the movie he showed up in. Either that, or it encountered the Borg at some point, which lead to the Borg deciding to copy the design with their own improvements (Read: Death Star sized Borg'ger probe that makes for some great trench runs in a Defiant.).

The Borg in the EU are actually

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

The remnant of an ancient race that was created by a time paradox that humans and the Cailar started.

The series this is in is actually pretty awesome, and i'd recommend reading the first few books, at least, even if you have no interest in the EU. It was the Destiny series, I believe, which was basically a lead-up to about half a decade worth of books. Where Janeway is revealed yet again as a complete and utter moron. After she blew up the transwarp node at the end of Voyager the Borg got really pissed off as a whole collective, as those things are apparently hard to create, even for them.

Their response was to decide that humanity was irrelevant, and go on an axe crazy rampage throughout the sector. This leads to them not sending one cube, but sending all of them, one for each world for the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, etc, etc.

The Federation ends up with some pretty horrific casualties at the end. Risa is just gone. Not even a planet there anymore. As are quite a few other core planets. And many of the outlying worlds were completely depopulated. The Borg just bombed them from orbit with plagues and other nastiness.

A lot of established characters, either in the show, or in the books, die in that series. And the ending's more bittersweet then anything else. It does lead into some good novels showing what happens when the Federation's put on the back foot, too. The entire Enterprise era subplot is lame, and serves as a ridiculous deux ex machina that ruins the latter half of the series, however.

There's some awesome moments in it, though. It establishes pretty much every major faction as being a badass in their own way when the chips are down. Like, early on in the series, a Galaxy class ship goes to aid a Klingon held Khitomer, which is sending out a SOS. The Galaxy class ship shows up, and gets its shit pushed in by a cube...

And then seeing that the Cube is going to wipe out the planet, not try to assimilate it, before they can make any repairs and re-engage the thing (However futilely.) to buy time for a Klingon fleet to show up, the captain doesn't hesitate to order the ship to go to warp facing the Cube, at point blank range even though he's scared shitless of dying. As the captain puts it "He only had to be brave, for just a moment".

This leads to some awesome Klingon politics, where Martok from DS9 pretty much throws a long overdue "reason you suck speech" to the council from DS9, and persuades them all to go to the Federation's aid. As Martok, in show, and in series, is pretty awesome, and isn't going to let something like that trump the Klingons.

There's also the big climax/twist reveal. The big ten powers of the show and EU finally manage to put their differences aside in the face of extinction long enough to all get together to stop the Borg armada. With more then a few main characters from the TV series in the allied armada.

Spoiler:

And are utterly crushed when the transwarp conduit opens. The Borg don't even stop to engage them. There's so many of them, and the cubes are obviously so big, that they just form one giant wall of black iron and smash through them with their hulls. The characters reactions are appropriately horrified in that "Oh fuck, we're all screwed" sort of way. And they are.

TVtropes puts it best:

Godzilla Threshold: The situation gets so bad that Starfleet seriously considers holding the Borg off with thalaron weapons and evacuating the Federation's population to another galaxy. In fact, Seven of Nine coldly deduces that the Federation cannot hope to win, and must embrace such desperate tactics to survive at all.

something ridiculous

How do they suss out the fact that FutureJaneway murdered the shit out of Borg Central with her future virus?

The Borg? The Borg weren't all there. All Janeway did was take a potential item of interest that could have exterminated them once and for all, and even freed the drones outside the point of contact, and used it to get her friends home instead of giving it to Starfleet for mass synchronized dissemination. Oh, and gave the Borg immunity to that virus thanks to them having first-hand knowledge of it.

Destroying Borg Central was basically the catalyst that sends the Borg into "kill'em all" mode. Because of what Janeway did, they concluded that it would be too expensive to take the "nice" way of dealing with the Federation and other factions of the Alpha Quadrant, they'd just wipe them out with their full military might and all the ingenuity a hive mind of hundreds of billions of people thinking in sync could come up with.

This, combined with the entirety of the Borg are finally paying serious attention to the Alpha Quadrant alone, leads to them taking leaps ahead in technology they field. Which in turn leads to such lovely things as them figuring out how to optimize burning away a planets atmosphere at long range, developing jump conduits deep inside every Empire's space, and devouring planets on the go for resources like they do in TNG, only on a much larger scale, so they could keep up the killathon without having to retreat for repairs.

Basically, Janeway almost kills the entire population of the Alpha Quadrant to get her BFF's home with her. No wonder they promoted her to Admiral.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the Klingon politics thing is doubly hilarious/awesome, because it was Khitomer, the Ranger dies in a kamikaze attack defending to take down the cube. This has the result of even sending a few complete monsters on the Klingon side things into a blind fury, either because the Federation "out awesome'd" them on the "die honorably" front of things, or because they genuinely had to admit that helping them was the honorable thing to do after a Federation captain pulled a stunt like that of his own free will.

Hell, a long-standing antagonist to Marok who wants to go on a kill frenzy rampage against the Federation (Like what happens in STO.) pretty much

Divided We Fall: Averted. Martok's nemesis Councillor Kopek agrees this is no time for politics. When Martok, leading the Klingon fleet, calls Kopek back on Qo'noS to warn him of impending Borg attack, Kopek assures Martok his throne will be waiting for him upon his return. Martok replies "with you sitting in it, I imagine?" However, Kopek for once isn't planning anything, and says so. It's the first time the character has been presented as anything other than a selfish Complete Monster; he understands the severity of the situation. He also dies defending Qo'noS, so possibly Redemption Equals Death.

I love that the EU makes out Janeway to be criminally incompetent. Not just because she was, but because the Voyager lead writers had such an idiotic hard-on for her and made her the hero of everyone who's ever met her. As SFDebris pointed out, Janeway's imaginary funeral in that episode where she dreams she's dying takes longer than Spock's real funeral in ST2, and is really nothing but Janeway dreaming of everyone she's ever met saying nice things about her. I don't care about the character, but I'm glad someone is using the books to put the writers back in their place.

I love that the EU makes out Janeway to be criminally incompetent. Not just because she was, but because the Voyager lead writers had such an idiotic hard-on for her and made her the hero of everyone who's ever met her. As SFDebris pointed out, Janeway's imaginary funeral in that episode where she dreams she's dying takes longer than Spock's real funeral in ST2, and is really nothing but Janeway dreaming of everyone she's ever met saying nice things about her. I don't care about the character, but I'm glad someone is using the books to put the writers back in their place.

Yeah, the EU writers are apparently fans of the series itself. But not in that creepy "Karen Traviss" sort of way that you get with Star Wars. This leads to them taking a much more critical eye when it comes to the TV shows, and much less in the way of horrible mis-steps in terms of the quality of the stories. A lot of people I talk too who only mildly liked DS9 for instance, recommended the re-launch/expanded seasons that were in novel format.

Janeway is actually dead by the time Destiny takes place. My understanding is that she did something stupid again in one of the earlier "crisis crossover" books, and atoned for it by saving Seven of Nine. Which is probably a good thing, because if she wasn't dead in the aftermath of Destiny, over half the galaxy would probably be gunning for her head.

As TVTropes puts it:

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It is heavily implied that the invasion occurs thanks to the actions of future Janeway back in "Endgame".

Edit: I think the novel series expanded on the content of the one awesome Voyager episode out there, actually, was the one Janeway died in. Which is ironic. Dark Frontier, which was essentially a Voyager movie that was aired on TV, was fairly awesome, and B&B were pricks about it despite it's fame, since they brought much more competent people in to handle its production. It actually won awards and put the Borg back on top as being a really goddamn scary threat.

However, because it actually was interesting and had decent content in it (Also, B&B had very little say in it, from what I understand. They brought better writers in.), B&B promptly ignored the (huge) plot developments it made about the Borg designing a virus to try and assimilate the Alpha Quadrant over the course of decades next episode. B&B also reversed the changes that the Borg had in Dark Frontier fairly quickly, too, in what appears to be an effort to try and write the whole thing into dis-continuity.

That's also kind of her fault too, come to think of it. Since instead of doing the heroic thing, she rambo'd it up and shot the shit out of the Queen, then left her with the research data they already had without ever mentioning that the Borg were designing the first of many atrocity weapons to Starfleet. Or going back to make sure they stopped it.

I kind of want to read these books now but jesus EU books are so overwhelmingly awful on average that I don't know if I can bring myself to pay for them.

Public library?

That, or get them on the Kindle. They're dirt cheap there. Or if you know someone who has them, get them to loan you a few of them.

Also, that way you get the more modern series. The older stuff before the EU really took off (Prior to that it was mostly actors in the shows and other random folks doing them, which obviously made them very hit or miss in quality.) is kind of iffy. Anything after the cancellation of Enterprise is usually going to be good. Somewhere around that time is the point where the license holders sat back, and told the writers to expand on the setting and go nuts.

It's also around when a ton of neat stuff started happening. Like the extra "seasons" of DS9, TNG, and Enterprise in novel format. All of which (Even Enterprise. It goes into the stuff the new writing team they brought in in the last season wanted to detail, which is actual canon that was established in TNG, as opposed to the B&B asspulls.) is pretty awesome. The novel also, in addition to going into the un-aired season, also, as a result of that, patches a ton of holes in Enterprise the TV show and makes it moderately more bearable. Like how T'pol is actually half Romulan. Which was a TV show writers explanation on why all her character development seemed to happen when she got emotional.

Also, it slyly makes a few references to B&B being retconning idiots. One assumes they aren't well liked amongst actual writers.

It also does away with the "cultural hat" thing. Pretty much every race, since they don't need to contain things to a limited period of time/pay for effects anymore, gets a much deeper look. The Klingon stuff is pretty awesome, as a result. I only read one of the Klingon Empire books, but there's some parallels (Supported by TVTropes) to Arthurian legends. With Worf being the Lancelot of the cast.

And the TNG re-launch has the inverse of Spock, a female vulcan who is more wanting to act human from what I understand. Along with a ton of different aspects of Vulcan culture that weren't shown (IE: Logic isn't their hat. They're just as diverse as anyone. They have all sort of different sects, with the whole "logic" thing being the largest. It's just that that makes better viewing on TV.) Though I haven't gotten around to reading that yet.

Doesn't mean there aren't some stinkers or bad periods of time in the bunch, but as far as a licensed EU goes, it's pretty damn good. It's definitely ahead of the Star Wars EU, even now, after shit like Traviss and a few other writers playing fanfic completely destroyed a series, leading to the writing team getting purged.

Edit: To clarify on a term I used before, if you're looking for the extra seasons of each show, they're referred too as "relaunches".

Notably, there are various "relaunch" series, which continue the story of each show beyond its end; revealing, for example, if Bajor joined the Federation, what the Enterprise-E does between and after movies or what the crew of Voyager did after coming home. The Trek line has been considerably more proactive post-Nemesis, and has in fact broken Contractual Immortality (though who died would be a spoiler).

I recall reading that book. It was called Dark Mirror. I think I remember it being really good.

Mirror Picard is literally knocked out for most of the book, so the writer didn't have to worry about writing him. And it's funny you should mention Mirror Troi. She was A) approximately as powerful as the captain for reasons and B) the most mean and evil of them all.

Yeah. Really, just, excellent parallel universe stuff. Which can get tiresome really fast. The Mirror Enterprise-D had far superior weapons and more militaristic uniforms (as described). The stuff about Mirror Picard was generally hinted at, but he was basically a ruthless bastard. Which you'd have to be, because most promotions there seemed to come from dead men's shoes.

That just reminded me of one excellent example of ruthless Picard in the book

So are all these books basically just continuity porn, or do they actually do the work of (good) Trek and try to advance valuable science fiction questions?

There's a book about the Dyson Sphere, which may have just been called Dyson Sphere, where the D goes back to explore the thing but some kind of space thing gets shot at the sphere, so the D and an Intrepid full of Horta have to go around finding as much as they can as fast as possible about the sphere and they even come across some sphere species.

It was a pretty good book and using the Horta lets them do some nifty things with the resolution.

Err, aren't the Horta non-humanoid? And, like, they eat rocks? How the hell does Starfleet have an entire ship reconfigured to be crewed by living rocks that eat rocks?

You'll have to read the book to find out. It was an interesting look into the non-human part of Starfleet as well as what it would be like for a civilization that evolved inside a Dyson Sphere. They use the Horta to draw a parallel, since they evolved inside a planet and it would be death to leave it until Kirk showed up and had Spock mindsex the mother Horta.

Well, I read Before Dishonor, and all but the most recent New Frontier.

Sounds like Destiny would be a good place to jump back in, but damn, Amazon*, $8/book for the Kindle editions?

*Yes, I know...the publisher sets the price. But I shouldn't have to pay for printing, binding, and distribution of a digital edition.

Destiny is a big crisis cross-over book. You don't necessarily need to start with it. Not only does it not really have the exploration of culture that the other books do (Something Trek has always excelled at.), it's also probably why the price is so high. It's very much a focused character piece in many chapters. You're essentially getting the cast from multiple books spread across two eras pushed into one giant book, along with their reactions (and growing horror, for many) as it becomes more and more apparent that Janeway utterly fucked them beyond any hope of survival.

I haven't checked the kindle prices yet, but i'd recommend starting with the TNG and DS9 relaunches. I've only a read a few out of them, but many people recommend both depending on which show you like more. There's over 20 of the DS9 relaunch books (People fucking love DS9, apparently.), and about eight or nine of the TNG books. The TNG relaunch books also go into the start of the Borg war in Destiny, while Destiny just drops you into it and expects you to have known all these characters from all the shows and the ones introduced in the books with only a small introduction (Like this dude is a space cyborg who isn't evil.).

Check a bit of these pages to see which one you'd like better, is my suggestion.

If you go with the TNG relaunch, my suggestion is to read up until when it starts going into the aftermath of Destiny, then continue reading the TNG Relaunch. As there's a few big political whammies that take place immediately after Destiny that set up for the next Big Bad and situation.

Also, Destiny, despite being the culmination of quite a bit of time put into the EU can be very hit or miss at the conclusion. Which might tick you off. There's a plot twist that people either say is good or bad, depending on how much they wanted the good guys to

Spoiler:

Shoot the shit out of the Borg.

Not that they didn't go to great pains in the not-shitty shows and the EU to show that that's not an actual possibility. But hey, people are stupid.